Discussion
This first nationwide cross-sectional survey focused on how beekeepers
perceive and manage risks (climate change, Varroa mite,
management practices, and exposure to pesticides). Understanding
beekeeper’s perception of risks affecting their colony health and
mortality is crucial to better understand beekeepers’ attitudes toward
risks and potentially, to adopt new management practices.
Population representativeness was achieved through a snowball sampling
strategy compared to the number of voluntarily registered beekeepers on
the FASFC database. Representativeness was confirmed by a Chi-squared
test and the respondents were the subset of the target population.
Nevertheless, the real number of beekeepers in Belgium and per region
was difficult to obtain, as most beekeepers are hobbyists and reluctant
to register themselves.
Beekeepers’ general attitude towards risk was derived by measuring their
degree of risk aversion using four statements on general issues.
Beekeepers seemed to have a common understanding of general risk.
Nevertheless, for most questions, beekeepers’ perception seemed
divergent, as important disparities appeared with std values that were
high compared to their respective average values. This might be due to
the lack of heterogeneity in beekeeping education and/or in a cultural
difference in the perception of risk; Belgium being made up of the three
linguistically and culturally different regions.
Climate change is not uniformly perceived as a concern compared to
management or Varroa infestation, though it has been pointed out
as one of the causes of the colony mortality by scientific research
(Dennis and Kemp, 2016; Flores et al., 2019). Overcoming the barriers to
mitigate climate change appeared though to be achievable for most
beekeepers.
For Varroa perception, the parasite susceptibility was well
perceived unlike the severity of the parasite. The benefits of
mitigating Varroa risk were positive and the answers were
homogenous without being really high. Nevertheless, the barriers to
reducing Varroa risk did not seem challenging. When we looked at
the detail of the questions dealing with the barriers, beekeepers did
not seem to be much affected by the economic impact of colony losses and
did not consider the investment in time for Varroa diagnosis as a
barrier with divergences in these opinions. To our knowledge,Varroa diagnosis is not a widely used practice among hobby
beekeepers, because it is time-consuming (Thoms et al., 2018; Underwood
et al., 2019).
Pesticide risk perception differed for beekeepers whether it was for
agriculture or apicultural use. To them, the susceptibility of high
exposure to veterinary drugs was lower than to agriculture pesticides.
Moreover, both scored quite low. The susceptibility of pesticide
exposure was expected to be higher. The severity of pesticide exposure
(agriculture and apiculture jointly) was perceived as important but not
alarming and their benefits were positive. Reducing the use of
veterinary drugs and agricultural pesticides were perceived as difficult
to reach. The answers to the question dealing with reducing the use of
veterinary drugs appeared with large disparities and a high std value.
These disparities could be explained by three observed tendencies that
seemed to coexist in the Belgian beekeeping community: the first
tendency implies the use of drug-based treatments yearly, without
monitoring Varroa infestations. The second tendency applies
monitoring of Varroa infestations and the use of acids (oxalic)
to decrease Varroa pressure on honey bees colonies when required.
The third tendency is not to treat infested colonies and to start
relying on the selection of Varroa -resistant honeybees. These
three distinctive tendencies could explain partly the average score of
the susceptibility of veterinary drugs as well as the high std values.
Out of the three previously assessed risks, the respondents seemed to
perceive the importance of management practices more uniformly than any
of the 3 other risks. This was of utmost importance for the health and
survival of honey bee colonies, as management practices were crucial to
compensate the effects made worse by the Varroa infestations,
changes in climate, and many other interacting stress factors for honey
bees. Nevertheless, some questions (e.g. the hive type) kept on being
reversed.
Beekeepers felt the most responsible for the quality of the honey they
produce and were mostly influenced by their own health and environment
protection as well as by the colony mortality. These elements could be
considered as a lever for adopting better management practices.
Through the results of this survey, std values fluctuated quite a lot,
sometimes exceeding variable average values. The questions with the
highest std values, meaning the most controversial ones, were related to
the questions regarding varroosis perception, and more specifically the
systematic use of chemical treatments (e.g. apistan, apivar) to controlVarroa and avoid colony mortality, the adoption of more selective
use of varroacides to delay the development of resistance, as well as
the role played by untreated neighbouring colonies on Varroare-infestation in own apiaries. The biggest disparity in answers
appeared with the question related to whether the responsibility ofVarroa control lay with the authorities, or at the individual
beekeeper’s level. This issue has always been a sensitive subject for
Belgian beekeepers as the authorised treatment substances are limited to
products which some do not consider effective.
The Welch test was performed to compare the perception of beekeepers
with colony mortality lower and higher than 10% assuming that
beekeepers with lower mortality rates have better risk management. The
empirical threshold of 10% is considered acceptable in Belgium but is
open to discussion. Although no reference values exist for the
acceptable level of colony losses, various acceptable rates of colony
mortality were reported in European countries (Charrière and Neumann,
2010; Genersch et al., 2010) and outside Europe (Steinhauer et al.,
2014).
The results indicated that beekeepers with mortality rates lower than
10% had a higher average number of colonies, and were more active in
increasing them than the ones with mortality rates higher than 10%. The
size of the apiary, the age, and the experience of the beekeeper have
already been reported as factors directly linked to the survival of the
honey bee colony (Brodschneider et al., 2016; Jacques et al., 2017).
We assumed that these results expressed better capacities in risk
management and thus in management practices, and a proactive approach of
beekeeping. The scores of the benefits of reducing the risk of colony
mortality through better management practices confirmed our assumption.
These risks were significantly better perceived by the beekeepers with
mortality rates under 10% and had a higher score at all questions
related to the actions or intentions of actions. This confirms the
hypothesis that greater levels of perceived risk combined with strong
perceptions of the benefits of action would lead to increased motivation
to act in better ways. Nevertheless, those same beekeepers scored
significantly lower in the perception of climate change severity and
varroosis severity. We cannot state with certainty if these perceptions
were due to the beekeepers’ resilience capacity or to the lack of the
perception of impact severity, due to good management practices. No
other studies that would allow us to compare our results are currently
available.